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There is no technical shortage of lithium or other rare earth elements in the ground. Plenty down there. Getting it is not like mining for coal. There are no giant chunks of ore to be placed into a cart. Instead of digging a coal mine, to get the lithium and rare earth elements, might as well just destroy the entire mountain and pump out all the ground water! China is cool with destroying an entire ecosystem, US is less comfortable with the intensive and environmentally hazardous lithium mining options. Also, both major methods are time consuming and cost prohibitive. (Although there are plans to do it in North America soon) Plans to use fracking technologies to get to it as well. google pictures of lithium mines and lithium fields and you will see what I mean. Of course increased demand for products will affect shortages. Hopefully new mining techniques will improve the process and minimize environmental hazards, but you can’t mine without damaging the environment and nearby ecosystems. Here is a decent description of lithium mining methods: https://www.sttsystems.com/solutions/lithium-extraction/

Interesting choosing China and USA as an example... when China produces <10% of all lihtium in the world and USA has literally only a single trial mine without any mineral processing.

Australia and Chile are responsible for 80% of the global lithium. Your linked article is out of date. Australia moved to #1 supplier using hard rock (it's much cheaper and easier to scale than brine extraction) at 42,000 tonnes/year versus nearest rival Chile at 18,000 tonnes /year.

Australia does use open cut mining to obtain it's lithium from hard rock. Chile pumps salt water from the ground but isn't using fracking.

> When an economically viable resource is identified, the surface is cleared, the earth is scraped away, the rock blasted and the rubble hauled off for processing into concentrate.

The mining/extraction is not a huge environmental concern - relatively benign as far as most mining is concerned. The processing of ore the unfriendly stage. It requires a lot of energy/electricity and the waste requires decisions about amount of processing versus dumping.

The article I posted states Australia obtains majority of Li in world via hard rock mining, as well as South America. China still accounts for >2/3 of lithium refining and has 1/4 of worlds lithium. Australia ships raw to China for refining. China recently purchased a third major lithium mine in South America, and the size of mining operations is in the tens of thousands of acres per mine site. Nothing “interesting” about my choosing China. they refine most, mine a decent amount in Asia, and have purchased a non insignificant portion of South American mines. Compared to the US that has a huge amount of lithium in Maine for example, but the state will not allow mines >3acres, because clearing the land down to the dirt for tens of thousands of acres will obvisouly destroy and displace vast ecosystems. US companies are using fracking tech to get to it. (I like that they are purchasing fracking water and using it, but likely will lead to expansion of fracking) https://uh.edu/news-events/stories/2022-news-articles/may-2022/05172022-lithium.php

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